Soft Voices
by Querel
Summary: A quiet inner monologue from the guy who can't be quiet.


What we are—the two of us together—it's a strange thing. I have been with you and we have been what we are for the short span of a human month. We have shared precious few things. Five times with our hands together, fingers laced. Two embraces: one as we stood, another in rest. One kiss. Chaste, with dry lips and slow breath.

What we are is unsteady, unsure. We are newly born. We are questions to one another. I ask if you are beside me. You ask if I am what you want. It has been a month of silences, where we don't ask but we do seek.

I find myself looking for you when I don't mean to. I wander and think that I have no purpose, no ways to follow or paths to remind myself to take. And then I'll find you—while you talk to your friends or watch stupid movies—and my heart will settle. I'll breathe again.

I think about what makes me happy and I think about you: the gaps that have yet to be filled, the many firsts that we haven't shared together. I think about your smile and remember the hesitance you keep there. It tells me I have to be patient. So I wait. And count the moments we share, the precious few.

My memories help the spaces yet to be filled. I have recalled them each so many times. Our only kiss is the backdrop of my thoughts, forever on loop, a soft hum to the noise in my life. I have every detail to wield, plentiful and treasured like the many colors kept secret in our gray world.

It begins in the darkness where we were together, searching for what we never did find, the task abandoned. When I stumbled—not by darkness but distraction, fascinated by the flit and flick of your blue hood—you searched for me. You put your feet on the ground and got to your knees, right beside me.

You cut your finger on my claw when our hands bumped. The sound of your cry in the darkness was a tug on me. It made my fingers touch your face. And, shaking, I felt my heart existing in my chest; it was suddenly there. Behind my ribs and in my wrists. My breath became heavy in my lungs.

That was the first of our many silences. They are the empty spaces that have yet to be filled, waiting with their mouths open. Waiting for the days to arrive when we will feed them.

On that day, in the darkness as we crouched on the floor, there was a space filled that I never knew existed. It was our first kiss, our first of anything. Not mine or yours but ours, together. Our lips that came together and trembled, pushed as barely a kiss could. But when we moved our mouths, they were together. I did not let you go; your hands were hot when they reached for my hips.

I have never tasted your tongue. But there was a flavor to your lips against mine. I swallowed it down like the shivers that spilled over your shoulders. To this day, the remnants of your fear haunt me deeply. In that moment, my own terror bled through and I knew that your life had just changed. Not like me. I only grew. You were completely uprooted. What we did interrupted your everything; I am still completely diminished under the fact that I shared in the destruction of your expectations. I helped make you, helped the feelings for us come alive inside you.

I claimed godhood before and relished in it. This unexpected genesis completely defeated me. I have lost the will to claim it. It has humbled me.

I pulled you as close as I could after our kiss broke. You were shaking so hard. I was too, but not nearly as much as you. Your breath hitched and I broke the silence. I called your name. You held me tighter. The ground was hard and cold beneath us, but together we went down. I didn't let go. Neither did you.

There were many minutes that passed before you were calm again, your face pressed to my sternum as I wondered at the thrum of my own heartbeat. And then you asked if it meant anything, what we were doing together.

Of course it did, I told you. It meant absolutely everything.

We departed the darkness holding hands for the first time and I was happy.

I still am. Though I worry about you between the times where we have those moments, the precious few when we touch and the world shrinks to nothing but us. You're still unsure. It's different for you. I can't quite wrap my head around it, but I'm trying to be glad that you haven't run from me. That I still have the chance to be with you.

I don't mind waiting. I'm greedy and I want you to myself. All of you. Everything. I want the spaces to be filled. But more than that, I want your happiness. Your security. Your assurance that even though you think everything's different, the only thing that has changed is how far I'm willing to go. For us. For what we are.

We are matesprits. Boyfriends. Lovers. Whatever you call it. We are new and unsteady and overwhelmed, very young though we might think ourselves grown up. We are imperfect and waiting for the days to come when our hearts will settle. When you smile at me, hesitant though you may be, I know for a fact that we are in love. Not just me. Not just you. Both of us.

Together.


End file.
